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Email Dos and Don'ts: Spam-Prevention Techniques

Did you know? 80% of all email is unsolicited. These messages must be filtered out and deleted before you can find the messages you need. Of these unwanted messages, a large number may contain malicious code that can take down your network.

An individual or organizationcan do quite a bit to encourage or discourage spam. Here are a few simple rules to keep in mind.

Always verify a message is not a rumor or hoax before forwarding it to others.

Don't give your business email address to friends and family. They may not be aware of these rules, leaving you open to spam and worms.

Do not click "Send this link to a friend". Any information you enter into a website becomes the property of the website owner. When you give them an associates email address, you are also giving your associate a free subscription to many marketing lists. If you wish to send the link, copy and paste the URL from the address bar of your browser into an email message.

Do not forward messages with email addresses of prior recipients. Why expose the email addresses of your associates and friends? If you wish to pass the message along, copy the message content and paste into into a new, blank email.

Do not expose your corporate email account to online vendors. Any information you give a vendor will be incorporated into a mailing list and resold. Use a free email account from Yahoo! or Hotmail.

Use a corporate email service with spam-prevention tools. All customers using BSI's email services receive the benefit of our powerful spam-filtering tools.

Do not list each recipient in a bulk message. Use a mailing list. If this is not possible, take advantage of the "BCC" or "Blind Carbon Copy" field to mask recipients.

Do not forward just for the sake of it. The more messages you send and receive, the more spam you bring upon yourself.

Avoid becoming a victim of phishing and other scams

If it sounds too good to be true - it is. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Watch for words in the subject that prompt urgent attention. A subject line that reads "WARNING! Your account will be suspended in 24 hours" is most likely a phishing scam. If you are in doubt, go to the URL by typing directly into the address bar of your browser and entering your login as usual.

Do not enter personal info into URLs launched from your email. Phishing scams often emulate the real thing almost perfectly.